In a new video on YouTube, Google’s Matt Cutts talks about the methods that Google uses to determine the relevance of a web page. For the next years, backlinks will remain the most important ranking factor.

Google currently determines the rank of a web page in the search results by looking at the links that point to the page, the overall reputation of the site and the quality of the content on the page.

If Google becomes better in understanding natural language and the ‘expert’ status of a web page author, links might become less important some time. For the next few years, there is no good alternative to backlinks.